Nikkei - $JD E-Commerce Giant CEO warns "Robots Will Replace 700,000 Delivery Workers".
Per FT's earlier piece last month: The 700,000 delivery personnel working for the firm will be replaced by robots, highlighting how rapid automation has become a new threat to China's already severe job market.
Liu Qiangdong, revealed that the company has signed contracts with approximately 120 schools to retrain its delivery workers, enabling them to transition into new roles such as robot repair and maintenance...
"Beijing has started to track AI’s hit to jobs as a national priority."
This follows other corporate strategy reports like $AMZN, of avoiding 600,000 future hires with robots.
But it's very interesting to see the shift in worker roles to robot support. Maybe $DASH to $UBER to $MELI, we'll all start to see this rollout following China.
There's a lot of retail disbelief over humanoid/robotics commercialization. But feels like the direction industry is heading down is pretty clear.
GOLI'S BEST VALUE DEAL IS STILL LIVE
Amazon has 180 Ashwagandha & Vitamin D gummies priced at just $13.52
The 60-count bottle is still over $11
You're getting 3x the gummies for about $2 more
https://t.co/obdVzD7p3p #ad
🚫 CLAIM: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims that the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
✅ TRUTH: Commercial ships are continuing to transit in and out of the Strait of Hormuz tonight.
🇮🇱🇮🇷 Israel Files FIFA Complaint Over Iran's "168" School-Massacre Pins
Knesset deputy speaker Simon Davidson ran to Infantino, fretting that gold badges for the 168 children killed at the Minab school are dragging "politics" into football.
The missiles that collapsed a classroom of 7-year-olds were fine. A lapel pin remembering them is the emergency. Cry harder.
What goes up on concentration risk comes down on concentration risk.
And put volumes exploded.
So my warning to protect for dispersion unwind was well-timed. 😉
https://t.co/H2PSvyzsmD
🇨🇳📉AT CLOSE, SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX CLOSED DOWN 0.72%, SHENZHEN COMPONENT INDEX DOWN 0.33%, CSI 300 INDEX DOWN 0.64%, CHINEXT INDEX DOWN 0.73%.
#CHINA $SHCOMP $SSEC $ASHR $HSI $KWEB $FXI $HXC $DRAG $YINN $YANG #STOCKMARKET
(https://t.co/Ms7BV6dwls)
BREAKING: Total US net call options volume is down to ~10,000 contracts per day, the lowest since the April 2025 selloff.
The 5-day moving average of calls-minus-puts has fallen by -1.3 million contracts since February.
This comes as put options trading has significantly outweighed calls since the Iran War began.
By comparison, the April 2025 and August 2024 bottoms were -1.1 million and -750,000 as put volume far exceeded calls.
Options activity is rapidly shifting.
🚨🇮🇷 Iran’s new Supreme Leader just spoke, and it’s worse than I expected
Key statements:
- “All US bases should immediately be closed in the region, those bases will be attacked”
- “We will obtain compensation from the enemy. If they refuse, we will take their assets to the extent we deem appropriate, and if that is not possible, we will destroy an equivalent amount of their property”
- "We have foiled attempts to divide the country”
- "The Strait of Hormuz must remain closed”
- “Countries in the region must clarify their position regarding those who have aggressed against Iran”
- "Discussions are ongoing regarding the opening of other fronts in areas where the enemy has little experience and is highly vulnerable. These other, new fronts may be activated if the state of war continues and if it is deemed appropriate”
In brief: He is more hardline than his father, his demands from the U.S. are extensive, and he is ready (one could say he prefers) a prolonged war.
Taking this statement at face value, things are about to escalate.
BREAKING: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is negotiating to buy drone interceptors from Ukraine, the country Russia has been bombing for four years, to defend its oil fields from Iran, the country America has been bombing for two weeks.
Read that sentence as many times as you need. It is the 21st century in a single transaction.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a Saudi intermediary closely tied to Aramco is in advanced talks with Ukrainian manufacturers SkyFall and Wild Hornets for their P1-SUN and STING interceptor drones, plus Phantom Defense electronic warfare systems, in a multi-million-dollar batch purchase explicitly designed to destroy Iranian Shahed-type drones before they reach Saudi oil infrastructure.
Ukraine learned to kill Shaheds by being hit with them. Russia has launched thousands of Iranian-made Shaheds at Ukrainian cities, power stations, and military positions since 2022. Ukrainian engineers did not study the Shahed in a laboratory. They studied it falling through their bedroom ceilings. They reverse-engineered the threat, built interceptors calibrated to its exact flight profile, radar signature, and thermal characteristics, and fielded them under fire. The interceptors work because the engineers who built them did so while the drones they were designed to kill were attacking their homes.
Now Saudi Arabia wants to buy that knowledge. Not from Lockheed. Not from Raytheon. Not from the Patriot system that costs $3 million per missile and was designed to kill ballistic warheads, not $20,000 drones. From Ukrainian startups that built their products in basements and tested them on battlefields.
The strategic implications cascade across every domain this war touches.
For Ukraine, this is the moment the country transforms from victim to vendor. Zelensky’s government has spent four years asking the world for weapons. It is now selling them. Every interceptor drone that ships to Saudi Arabia funds Ukraine’s own defence, reduces Kyiv’s dependence on Western aid, and demonstrates that the country the world pitied has become the world’s most experienced counter-drone power. The “salesman of the year” meme circulating on X understates it. Ukraine is not selling products. It is selling survival expertise, and the market for survival expertise in a world of $20,000 drones is every country with infrastructure worth protecting.
For Saudi Arabia, this is an admission that the most expensive Western air defence systems in the world cannot efficiently kill the cheapest weapons in the world. The Kingdom operates Patriot batteries, THAAD interceptors, and an integrated air defence architecture that costs tens of billions. Against ballistic missiles, these systems perform. Against saturation swarms of $20,000 Shaheds, they are economically irrational: a $3 million Patriot missile destroying a $20,000 drone is a 150-to-1 cost inversion that the attacker wins by firing. Ukraine’s interceptors cost a fraction of Western missiles and are purpose-built for exactly the threat Iran is deploying. Aramco is not buying Ukrainian because it is fashionable. It is buying Ukrainian because the math demands it.
For Iran, this is the beginning of the end of the Shahed’s strategic advantage. The drone that closed Hormuz, burned Salalah, struck the SafeSea Vishnu, hit towers in Dubai, and terrorised Gulf capitals for two weeks is about to face a countermeasure designed by the people who have been fighting it longest. If Saudi fields are protected by Ukrainian interceptors calibrated to the Shahed’s exact signature, the IRGC’s cheapest and most effective weapon becomes progressively less effective with every unit deployed.
For the world, this is the moment the drone age produces its own antibody. The same battlefield that created the threat created the cure. Ukraine is the immune system the Gulf is purchasing.
https://t.co/eMrt5qYYst
HERE. WE. GO.
- Going ALL IN on @BNBCHAIN & USD1
- Myriad Wallet is going LIVE
- New leaderboard and points structure
- FINALLY AN ORDER BOOK!!!
The biggest and most important update since launch is here.
Expect a massive spike in users and volumes, it’s time to compete!